Chris Duckett / ZDNet:
Microsoft is investigating an authentication error impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Office, Teams, Power Platform, and Dynamic365  —  Microsoft continuing to look into the problem after roll back fails to solve issue.  —  Microsoft is currently looking into an authentication error hitting its Office 365 systems.

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Microsoft said it’s investigating an authentication outage with Office 365, preventing users from accessing some of the company’s most widely used services, including Office.com, Outlook.com, and Teams.

The company’s status dashboard said the issue started at 5:25pm ET, and has impacted mostly consumer users across the globe for the last few hours. Some government users may also be impacted, the company said.

In a series of tweets, Microsoft said that it tried to fix the issue, but was forced to roll back its changes after the fix failed.

For now, Microsoft said it was “rerouting traffic to alternate infrastructure to improve the user experience while we continue to investigate the issue.”

But that leaves millions on the U.S. west coast and users in Australia still unable to access their online services.

TechCrunch will keep you posted with developments. In the meantime, feel free to catch up with some of the bigger stories of the day.

Read more:

• Daily Crunch: Judge delays TikTok ban
• Google to better enforce Play Store in-app purchase policies, ease use of third-party app stores
• Amazon launches a $4.99-per-month ‘personal shopper’ service for men’s fashion
• Watch SpaceX launch 60 more Starlink satellites for its broadband internet service
• Healthcare giant UHS hit by ransomware attack, sources say

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The pandemic shook up our and virtually every other video news production process as Zoom became the focus of our daily lives; slowly but surely we’ve altered the production process to reflect Zoom’s easy on boarding and semi-casual approach to virtualized meetings and conversations.

We now use a series of interweaved services to broadcast the live Zoom recording session over ReStream, which in turn streams to Twitter/Periscope, YouTube, and Facebook Live. Some of the show’s regulars share the Facebook stream using Watch Party, aggregating comments and viewership metadata of their friends and cohorts. Once the session is over, we add music, titles, and pointers to the Gillmor Gang Telegram Backchannel, and embed the YouTube mix here on TechCrunch.

Much of this live-streaming strategy has been workshopped with people like Brent Leary who with his CRM Playaz partner Paul Greenberg produce a growing series of livestreams on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networks. Brent joined the Gang in late 2019. On this Gillmor Gang episode, Brent switches gears from yet-another-TikToc segment to a new streaming target, Twitch. Just before he bails to co-host a Playaz show, I ask him to explain the latest project they’re cooking up. Here, in his own words, is more:

CRM Playaz Executive Roundtable Convo Livestream…Not Webinar….or Panel

We’re seeing broadcast media use streaming platforms to do their jobs while they shelter in place and social distance. And while some of this has the look and feel of a Zoom conference call we’re all experiencing way too much, as time goes on they also are beginning to make these livestreams look like regular broadcasts to a certain extent. Which means that if they can take cues from us amateurs to do their broadcasts, we can do the same, or at least attempt to, by making our “programming” more tv-like.

So, Paul Greenberg and I, underneath the umbrella of our CRM Playaz video podcast, had an idea. To bring senior executives from the five leading vendors in the CRM industry – according to industry market share – together for a free flowing conversation about the state of the industry seven months into the pandemic. Kind of like what you might see on a cable news segment…but of course there’s no way you’d see a bunch of execs talking about CRM on CNN, Fox or MSNBC. But we’re gonna do it, complete with a post-roundtable show directly following the discussion with a number of rapid-fire panels of industry analysts and thought leaders sharing their thoughts and opinions on what they heard from executive convo.

Now we aren’t talking webinar here, or something stiff and controlled like you’d normally see from a traditional panel of high level execs. Not that there’s anything wrong with a traditional webinar or panel. But these streaming platforms give us the ability to put a different lens on things. Maybe create an environment for a less polished but just as substantive group convo which goes wherever it needs to – and goes with humor and flexibility and twists and turns…and comradery. And maybe there’s an audience of folks out there in their comfortable home office taking it all in and also participating with their own commentary that might also become a part of the conversation. And those are the cues we can take from the broadcast media – to make these business livestreams more comfortable, more communal, and more real… and less staged and sterile.

So we’ll see how it goes on October 8th at 1:30pm et, as we are excited to bring together a group of folks who are not only leaders at the leading vendors, but also people who have personalities and senses of humor to go with all the experience and smarts. Because when you get into what will no doubt have serious interactions on important subjects, we think you can do it in a way that allows us to be human – and possibly smile at seeing a dog or cat in the background – Anne Chen of Salesforce knows what I mean. Or laugh when a little kid of one of these high-powered execs come stomping into the room looking for his mom or dad. And maybe catch a glimpse of something you just wouldn’t experience in the traditional settings you’d normally see a panel made up of folks like:

• Suresh Vittal, VP Experience Cloud Platform and Products, Adobe
• Alysa Taylor, CVP Business Applications and Global Industry, Microsoft
• Rob Tarkoff, EVP/GM of #CX, Oracle
• Bill Patterson, EVP/GM #CRM Applications, Salesforce
• Bob Stutz, President, CX, SAP

So if you’re into CRM, or just curious to see how this all comes off, you can register to join us for the livestream at https://ift.tt/33aOsSn (https://ift.tt/33aOsSn). And let us know what you think in realtime…

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, September 25, 2020.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

For more, subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the notification feed here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

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We have the official date!

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China's surprise pledge to slash its carbon footprint to zero by 2060 was met with cautious applause, but fresh spending on coal to rev up a virus-hit economy threatens to nullify its audacious bid to lead the world into a low carbon future.

The fossil fuel has powered China's economic surge over the last thirty years, and the nation burns about half the coal used globally each year.

Between 2000 and 2018, its annual carbon emissions nearly tripled, and it now accounts for nearly a third of the world's total greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Despite pledges to wean the economy off coal with the world's most ambitious investment in renewables, China's coal consumption climbed back in June this year to near the peak levels seen in 2013.

That was in part due to a pivot back to coal after geopolitical uncertainty in the Saudi peninsula, China's main oil supplier.

But the coronavirus, which saw the Chinese economy contract for the first time in 30 years, also opened the taps from government lenders to build new coal plants to revive flatlining provincial economies.

There is a "tension at the heart of China's energy planning" Li Shuo, senior climate and energy officer at Greenpeace China, told AFP.

It "pits Beijing's strategic interests against the immediate goals of cash-strapped provincial governments, makes it difficult to walk the talk" on cleaner future.

This week Xi Jinping unveiled China's bold pitch for leadership on global warming at the United Nations, vowing his nation will reach peak emissions before 2030 and go carbon neutral thirty years later.

It is the first time China has announced any plans to become carbon neutral, but so far there have been no details on how the country would rebalance away from fossil fuels.

In the first half of 2020 China approved 23 gigawatts-worth of new coal power projects, more than the previous two years combined, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a San Francisco-based environmental NGO.

"A new fleet of coal plants is in direct contradiction with China's pledge to peak emissions before 2030," said Lauri Myllyvirta, China analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Facing both ways

The world's second-largest economy is also positioning itself as the global leader in renewables.

It is already the top global producer and consumer of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles, and Chinese factories make two-thirds of all solar cells installed used worldwide.

"China's energy policy is like a two-headed beast, with each head trying to run in the opposite direction," said Greenpeace's Li.

But the new coal surge is running renewables out of the market because China's energy distribution system uses Soviet-style quotas, where power suppliers are allocated a monthly supply limit.

The grid quotas pushed local governments to increase the allocation for coal-based power over recent years, and it leave less room on the grid for renewable energy use, even if investment in them is stepped up.

"Local governments prefer to buy more coal-generated power to protect mining jobs," Li said.

Wind and solar farms have been forced to idle and dozens of new renewable projects have been cancelled since late last year as small private operators struggle to make money.

White elephants

Experts say China's coal addiction will not be easy to end.

The country already has 400 gigawatts more coal-fired capacity than what is needed to meet peak demand, according to GEM.

"China's coal fleet is running at about 50 percent capacity," Myllyvirta said.

"Many facilities are white elephants. Adding new ones would only make them less efficient."

Policymakers say new plants with lower emissions standards will be replace the old dirty chimneys.

But the savings are modest: new plants emit just 11 percent less carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of power generated compared to the old ones.

The direction of travel for now still points to a energy future dominated by coal.

Renewables are slapped with higher land taxes, interest rates on loans and have lower grid quotas.

Subsidies for onshore wind farms are currently set to end in 2021 — offshore wind farm subsidies ended in March as subsidies for solar were also slashed in half — while investments in clean energy dipped eight percent in 2019, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Meanwhile, overseas Belt and Road investments will festoon developing nations from Pakistan to Zimbabwe with new coal power stations.

"Our energy policy needs a serious overhaul — a surgery — because the growth in renewables has hit a glass ceiling," Li said.

"But reforms have stalled for nearly a decade, because the coal lobby is too powerful."

Also Read: China pledges to reduce emission, be carbon neutral by 2060: What you need to know

from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/338NhmA

As the US prepares to return humans to the Moon this decade, one of the biggest dangers future astronauts will face is space radiation that can cause lasting health effects, from cataracts to cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Though the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s proved it was safe for people to spend a few days on the lunar surface, NASA did not take daily radiation measurements that would help scientists quantify just how long crews could stay.

This question was resolved Friday after a Chinese-German team published in the journal Science Advances the results of an experiment carried out by China's Chang'E 4 lander in 2019.

"The radiation of the Moon is between two and three times higher than what you have on the ISS (International Space Station)," co-author Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, an astrophysicist at the University of Kiel told AFP.

"So that limits your stay to approximately two months on the surface of the Moon," he added, once the radiation exposure from the roughly week-long journey there, and week back, is taken into account.

There are several sources of radiation exposure: galactic cosmic rays, sporadic solar particle events (for example from solar flares), and neutrons and gamma rays from interactions between space radiation and the lunar soil.

Radiation is measured using the unit sievert, which quantifies the amount absorbed by human tissues.

The team found that the radiation exposure on the Moon is 1,369 microsieverts per day – about 2.6 times higher than the International Space Station crew's daily dose.

The reason for this is that the ISS is still partly shielded by the Earth's protective magnetic bubble, called the magnetosphere, which deflects most radiation from space.

Earth's atmosphere provides additional protection for humans on the surface, but we are more exposed the higher up we go.

"The radiation levels we measured on the Moon are about 200 times higher than on the surface of the Earth and five to 10 times higher than on a flight from New York to Frankfurt," added Wimmer-Schweingruber.

NASA is planning to bring humans to the Moon by 2024 under the Artemis mission and has said it has plans for a long term presence that would include astronauts working and living on the surface.

For Wimmer-Schweingruber there is one work-around if we want humans to spend more than two or three months: build habitats that are shielded from radiation by coating them with 80 centimeters (30 inches) of lunar soil.

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LinkedIn has introduced a host of new features as part of a fresh redesign. It now has a variety of new messaging features to give users quicker ways to communicate and have more control over their conversations and messages. LinkedIn has announced that it will soon make it easy for users to switch the conversation from chat to face-to-face using Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans by Verizon, or Zoom directly in LinkedIn messages. To do that, users need to click on the video icon next to where they would have had typed a message. From there, they will see a pop-up where one can choose from Teams, Zoom, or BlueJeans and a prompt to sign in.

Users can share a unique link to start an instant meeting or schedule the meeting for later.

LinkedIn has also introduced the ability to edit one's message, allowing users to quickly and easily correct a mistake. If the message is no longer relevant, or one has sent an attachment by mistake, they can delete it as well.

To make use of the feature, an account holder will have to press-and-hold or double tap on the message to open up a menu of options on mobile. On the desktop, users need to hover over the message until they see a pop-up with "..." From there they will get options to edit or delete.

LinkedIn has also added emoji on their messaging service. Users can press and hold or double-tap on any message to open up a menu of options on mobile, while they can hover over a message and get the tools on the desktop.

The business and employment-oriented online service has also made it easier for users to select multiple conversations at a time to archive, delete or even mark them read/unread all at once.

For mobile users, they need to access the menu by tapping "..." at the top right-hand corner of the app, where they will see "manage conversations." They can also press and hold on a message until they see checkboxes next to each message. Users need to check the box next to each message they want to manage and select Mark unread, Delete, or Archive. For Desktop users, they need to hover over a message to see the option and select the actions.

Apart from these LinkedIn has also introduced the opportunity to report inappropriate messages and invite others to join a conversation as well.

If a user sees an in-line warning that means the message was automatically flagged for an issue. Users will have the option to view or dismiss and mark as safe the message.

As for inviting others, users need to go to the top right-hand corner “...”, and click “new group chat” and add others to join.

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